Page 122 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

A whole wing of the palace, with sumptuous apartments large and small, had been
preempted for the free use of the guest, who were allowed to repair thereto for
whatever purposes desired.

Even the throne had been removed from the great hall to allow room for more
tables.

Not one of the invited guests failed to come to the ill-fated feast. Every seat at
every table was occupied, when the waiters with trays of steaming food held high over
their heads streamed in from the kitchens.

King Belshazzar sat at the head table, placed in the space usually occupied by the
throne. Clothed in the royal purple, he was strikingly handsome, except for the marks
of dissipation that already showed plainly on his face. One of his paramours sat on
each side of him and two of his favorite courtiers and their wives sat at his table. His

face was already flushed with drink at the beginning of the feast.

As the banquet progressed, Belshazzar would leap to his feet and call upon the
guest to join him in drinking toasts first to Bel then to each one, in order, of the

Babylonian idols which were placed around the walls. Every guest would rise and
drink to the toast each time the king demanded it until men and women were all in an
advanced stage of inebriation, with an increasing breakdown of all moral restraints
that invariably accompanies such debauchery and idolatry, Brazen licentiousness was

a part of the worship of Bel, and this wicked Bacchanalian orgy degenerated into
indiscriminate promiscuity between men and women as they would retire to the
adjoining apartments of the palace, and some were so intoxicated that they would
shamelessly indulge their lusts even in the brilliant light of the banquet-hall itself.

Small wonder that Belshazzar’s notorious feast has come down in history as a symbol
and synonym of unbridled drunkenness and lust and of the very acme of wickedness

and debauchery.

In the midst of his drunken madness, as he proposed toasts in rotation to the
Babylonian gods, Belshazzar had a new idea. He cried aloud to the palace attendants
to go to the Hall of Trophies and to bring therefrom the golden vessels which King

Nebuchadnezzar had removed to Babylon from the temple in Jerusalem.

The command was carried out. The vessels were removed from the Hall of
Trophies, washed and presented to the king. He chose one himself and distributed the
others to the guests of his table and the other guests as far as they would go.

He poured wine into the golden bowl which he held and commanded the others to